The Broken Umbrella
The Journey to Undo Silence and Rewrite Our Stories
Question:
What scared you most as a queer mother trying to raise kids while still learning how to belong to yourself?
Short Answer:
Trying to show up as a parent, but I’m still scared I don’t or won’t always know how.
Long Answer:
I had a dream during the time my daughter moved out, when she was beginning her life with her boyfriend, and I was beginning mine by moving in with Amy.
We were both learning how to love and let go at the same time,
And neither of us knew the language yet.
In my dream, I’m on a yellow bicycle, carrying a broken umbrella, pedaling hard to catch up to my daughter, her silhouette already a small bright shape
far ahead of me on the road.
We’re supposed to meet at the Goodwill and maybe I’m dropping the broken umbrella off. Maybe it’s something I keep meaning to give away, something I shouldn’t still be holding,
but haven’t let go of yet.
I arrived. The goddamn Goodwill is gone.
Or I’m lost. Those two things feel identical in the dream.
I reach in my pocket for my phone to say wait for me, I’m here,
but my pocket is empty.
Shame rises in the dark like heat, and I feel disappointed..
I am an adult, her Mom.
How did I lose my phone? Am I lost?
The worst part isn’t losing the phone,
it’s realizing I don’t remember her number.
I retrace my steps on the bike, searching the road, it’s dark and hilly. Along the way, I meet someone who might be my father, he’s speaking another language, he looks at me, then goes silent. His silence is eerily familiar.
In the dream, I reach into my pocket. The phone is there. The moment I felt the phone, my lifeline to her, my whole body lit up. A rush of gratitude and urgency woke me up. I haven’t lost her. Don’t stop reaching.
I’m trying to show up as a parent, but I’m still scared I don’t know how, especially now that she’s moved away.
The echoes of my father are shaping my relationship with my kids.
I didn’t know how to reach him then.
I didn’t know how to reach myself.
And I feared I didn’t know how to reach my daughter.
I’m seeing now how the way I showed up in the world shaped my kids long before I understood what I was doing. When they were younger, when I was still young, I was quiet, guarded, over-responsible, always scanning for danger. I thought I was keeping them safe by hiding the truth, by absorbing everything myself, by being the shield I never had. Being a broken umbrella.
I called my daughter and somehow weaved the story of my dream into our conversation. I shared how I missed her terribly, that I had had the privilege to witness her life, her presence, coming and going in our little apartment in Green Lake for so long and now she was gone..
I shared the one bathroom with her, held her heart when she was heartbroken, I made food late at night even when I was tired, I wanted her to be nourished, to be seen, heard and held. And now, I didn’t know how to navigate this new way of seeing her so she could feel it. I didn’t know how I could show up for her.
I’d been texting every day, checking in, asking how she was. Reaching, reaching, reaching.
She told me gently that she knew I was there even when I was quiet. She said she knows that I’m there for her without having to let me know and I just have to trust that she knows I will be there. That she’ll always reach out when she needs me.
“I’m not gone. I’m just growing. I’ll always circle back.”
When I went through my divorce and came out at the same time, I repeated the line I thought good parents were supposed to say:
“The kids will be fine. They’re resilient.”
But that wasn’t my voice.
That was my grandparents’ voice. The same one that told my parents we would be “just fine.”
I can still see my five-year-old self at the dinner table, watching my step mom throw a phone at my dad, the crack of it opening his forehead, blood running down, while we sat frozen, invisible and aching. We learned to stay quiet. We learned to pretend.
Everything is fine.
This is normal.
Keep eating.
Our little hearts were collapsing. No one said, This isn’t okay. No one asked how we were feeling. No one noticed that we were disappearing into ourselves.
But I see it now.
That little girl would spend her whole adult life trying to write a different story. The first for herself, and eventually for the children she hadn’t even imagined yet.
A story where nothing painful gets swallowed.
Where no one has to pretend to be fine.
Where we speak the truth out loud before it becomes another quiet wound handed down.
I see it now in who my kids are becoming.
In their honesty.
In their boundaries.
In their courage to say what I never could.
They tell me when they’re hurting.
They tell me what they need.
They don’t hide themselves to make the room more comfortable.
They are living the story I was trying to create.
So I’m choosing, every day, to say the things my family avoided.
To love in a way that doesn’t hide.
It’s wild how my kids end up teaching me the things I was never taught
how they handed back the very thing I tried to give them:
the freedom to become who they are without losing the people they love.
That loving them also means trusting them.
Even when it scares me.
Especially when it scares me.
Question for you, my readers.
What scared YOU most as a queer mother/parent trying to raise kids while still learning how to belong to yourself?
Were there things you promised yourself you would do differently than your parents?